Hello everyone! I haven't had a blog for a long time but you can blame my Daddy for taking so long to write it. It's been three weeks now since I had my third chemotherapy treatment and I'm actually feeling pretty good although I've been losing weight and sometimes I don't have the greatest appetite. The tumor on my leg has really shrunk but three weeks ago when I was at the vet the doctor told us that the nodule inside me next to my abdomen hasn't shrunk at all, although it hasn't grown either. And the doctor said it might be a good idea to give my body a break which is why I didn't get dragged to another chemo treatment today.
On May 23 our neighbors Nick and Fiona gave me a new toy to play with, and a whole twelve days had passed since my first chemo so I was feeling much better and more energetic so I played with the toy a lot:
And in these pictures you can see where the fur on my side had started to grow back after my cat scan:
Then on May 30, the day before my second chemo, I had a surprise visit from Indiana, and we had a conversation through the front door:
Then on June 1 I got scooped up and taken to my second chemo treatment, and yet again they gave me a sedative 'cause I was a real pest and pulled out the tube they tried to put in my paw, and then I pulled out the next tube they tried on a different paw, and after they finally gave me the drugs I stopped fussing, and they were able to put the doxorubicin into my veins. And I was feeling really wonky when I got home and all I could do was stare into space like this:
And I was wide awake for about 24 hours and didn't eat hardly anything and then the next day I took a couple naps and gradually got my appetite back but I didn't have a poo until my third day home and Daddy even called the doctor to find out if it was normal for me not to poo, and shortly after he got off the phone, I pooed. I got better and better, so that by the next week I felt like curling up in Uncle Kevin's lap like this:
And then on a Sunday morning, June 13, Indy came by again and I ran behind the drapes to see her:
and she was there!
And then she went away:
And another week went by and I noticed something scurrying behind the living room chair and it was a mouse! And not only that, he had a friend! And Daddy tried to take a picture of the mice when they hid behind the filing cabinet, and he got a photo of the one, like this:
And then on the morning of Tuesday June 22 I got taken to the vet again for my third chemo treatment and they sedated me again and I felt wonky again; and when I came home my legs were really wobbly and all I could do was lie on my rump and stare into space:
but Daddy bought me a heated pad for me to sit on so I would stay warm (since it was getting VERY COLD in Melbourne now that it's winter). And I got very attached to it:
But I hurt my hip somehow, and even when the sedation wore off, I still had a really bad limp, although that didn't stop me from running down the stairs, like you can see in these videos:
So Daddy took me to the Carlton vet on the Friday and the doctor prescribed me an anti-inflammatory and it was a liquid that Daddy mixed with some ice cream that he gave me as a treat each day for four days, and I felt all better. But I WASN'T thrilled with those mice being in my house, so for the last few weeks I've slept downstairs all night in the living room looking over my domain and making sure those mice don't come back. And Uncle Kevin found a hole at the back of the stove in the kitchen and bunged it up with some steel wool and ever since then the mice haven't come back inside; but Daddy saw a mouse run underneath the front of the house, so there might be rodents living just underneath the floor for all we know!
So it's been over three weeks now since my chemo, and Daddy's letting me have a break from it, since I've lost a lot of weight and he wants me to gain some of it back. He took me to the Carlton Vet again on July 9 and I had a urine test which proves that my kidney disease is stable and hasn't been worsened at all by the chemo; but my weight was only 5.28 kg (that's only 11 and a half pounds), which means I've lost at least a whole kilo since I was first diagnosed with a tumor, and the doctors don't know if that weight loss is because of my disease or the chemo; and even if my appetite has been good in general, the thing about tumors is that they absorb a lot of the energy that we eat, so I could be eating like a pig and still lose weight. So Daddy's taking me to the Essendon airport vet again next Tuesday for an ultrasound to see how the nodules inside me look at the moment.
So, some days I feel really sleepy and all I do is snooze:
And other days I feel perky and beg for people food:
And most evenings I lounge on my heated pad in the living room and sleep with my eyes open:
And sometimes I have a good catnap:
But I'm still here! And I know that my Daddy and Uncle Kevin love me, and they're doing their best to take care of me. I'm so thankful to all the blog readers who have sent me messages of good wishes.
The oncologist did say that I might lose my whiskers, and today I've started to lose a couple, and if you look closely at this next picture, you can see that I still have an eyebrow-whisker over my left eye, but I've lost the one over my right:
But I don't mind too much because not having all my whiskers doesn't interfere with my laptime:
